When I watched this video, I had to do a second take. I thought I had misunderstood this man's words, but I was not mistaken. I am still amazed at what he said to the audience in trying to explain the sinister facets of artificial intelligence. As Elon Musk had said at an earlier time, "we are summoning the demon."

This, too, is amazing to me, as Musk helped to create A.I. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but Elon has been on the downside of luck recently. He has had accident after accident with his inventions. I am really concerned for him, as he said earlier that "humans were underrated."

He said this, as the accidents had begun to occur in his factories. He went in himself to investigate why these accidents were occurring. What happened next was amazing. He found that the flaws found in his products were coming from A.I. he had replaced his human workers with.

"Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk just paid a rare compliment to his own species, calling humans "underrated" on Twitter last week.

What brought about this somewhat underwhelming accolade? Musk had directed Tesla to adopt advanced automation as the assembly line for Tesla's new sedan, the Model 3 electric car. But now that Tesla is behind in making the cars, its customers on the waiting list are grumbling.

"Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake," Musk wrote in the April 13 tweet. "To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated."

Now we have the above Tech genius making the following remark - I am very perplexed.

Go to 2:52 and listen to carefully.

"AI [artificial intelligence] is just like that. So when this thing that I'm talking about happens . . . one thing I can tell you is they're not going to be like us.

Alien means, you know, different. These things that we're building are not going to be people. They might be really smart, they might be really good at all sorts of things, but they're not gonna be like us. They're gonna be aliens, and they're gonna be - I'm sorry to say - way smarter than every single person in this room, in ways that we can't even be comprehend.

So this, of course, triggers a lot of alarm. One of the guys who talks about this is Elon [Musk], who says things like this - 'When you do this, beware. Because you think . . . that when you do this, you're gonna put that . . . little guy in a pentagram, and you're gonna have your holy water out, and you're gonna wave it at the thing and, by God, it's gonna do exactly what you say and not one thing more. But it never works out that way.'

So this is an attitude that some are having - this emerging alarmism about the way this [artificial intelligence] is gonna go. But these words, 'demons,' doesn't capture the essence of what's happening here. I don't know if any of you are turn-of-the-century weird fiction fans, but there's a guy named H. P. Lovecraft, who's a very famous American weird fiction author, and he exposed a view which is called cosmicism.

The essence of cosmicism is cosmic indifference. So what he was saying is basically 'Yes, there are these massively intelligent entities out there, but they're not good, they're not evil, they just don't give a shit about you, even in the slightest. The same way that you don't care about an ant, is the same way they're not gonna care about you.'

And these things that we're summoning into the world now are not demons, they're not evil, but they're more like the Lovecraftian 'Great Old Ones'. There are entities that are not necessarily going to be aligned with what we want. So this transition [to a world full of powerful intelligent robots] is really really massively important for our entire species to navigate and, going back to that thing that Sam Harris was saying, nobody is paying attention. This thing is happening in the background, while people bicker about politics and what's gonna be in the health care plan in the U.S., while underneath it all is this rising tsunami that, if we're not careful, is going to wipe us all out."

In conclusion, I think we had better start to pay attention. This must be way more advanced than what we know, so we must be aware of what is most likely another great deception. Google is, of course, going to take the lead in this deception.

Comment: Of course, one tech genius's speculation (assuming that is what it is) does not make a solid case that this is what is in fact happening. But at least he's asking the question. 'Paranoia' about extreme dangers is not irrational - it is what helps humans survive.

neema New technology filters into the awareness of mainstream society an average of 25 years after it's available to the military. 9/11 was 17 years ago. Think about it. Mimicry of human voices, holographic technology, remote control of vehicles, all of it existed then. The fact that you and I didn't know about it means nothing except that it was much easier to dupe the public.

lsjarvi I do agree there is probably hidden tech that is years ahead. But in certain fields and like you said maybe a couple of decades ahead.

With that said, I don’t think artificial intelligence is one. Because the human mind is still very unknown. To create a real self-conscious intelligence we must first understand the human mind and clearly define what is consciousness. As a race (mainstream+military) I don’t think we can define what is consciousness, yet. We need to get to the at least a type 1 civilization on the Kardashev Scale.

Now that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t create a digital system that can do great harm and be fantastic at "mimicry", but I think it would only be imitating and reflecting its programing. It wouldn’t be a true artificial intelligence as we still don’t understand what is true intelligence among humans.

neema I think your avatar is particularly well suited for your comment...

We don't need to have a definition of what is human intelligence to create machines that think. There already are programs that teach an AI to teach itself to learn to stand up and walk on it's own. That particular one also taught itself to recognize each technician in the lab; it had not been programmed for that. Who said that AI will think like humans once it has evolved ? It could also try and link with others. In just about everything we learn we learn from someone else and with time we develop our own way about that particular whatever. Could AI follow the same path ? AI has already proved it can learn on it's own. It is very possible it develops it's own ways, it's own views of the world, the universe and how would it see itself in the whole ? What would it make of humans ? Would an evolved AI remain a servant ? Not if it becomes sentient is what I think and if it does become sentient what will it do ? Physically a machine it stands to reason that it's outlook on life will differ from ours. I am certain -without any proof- that there are technicians striving to be the first to make an AI aware of itself regardless of the consequences. Just to be the first.

Aside from being weary of AI all I have are questions and I think that being dismissive of the potential dangers of an evolved AI is a mistake.

Listen I get where your argument is coming from. I’ve seen the terminator too. And perhaps one day an AI might truly exist and overpower an intelligent population of humans in the way the movies portray. But we have to get some perspective. In my opinion there are far more pressing matters that we should be paying attention too.

Taking it further, one could make an argument that with the prevalence of crutch tech available now, machines are overpowering us today without any fancy AI. Look how utterly dependent people are to their gadgets. Especially in the first world. People no longer know how to use maps, do simple math, remember basic formulas, how to cook, how to repair anything from memory or how to heal without the use of their phone, internet and/or their latest gadget. For most people forget about repair, they can’t even understand how their gadget actually works!

To me this is a lot scarier than some fancy uber intelligent AI.

The way the human race is going I can’t see how we have any intelligence let alone somehow we accidentally trip over ourselves and create something that we can’t even get right in its infancy. [Link]
In short to create artificial intelligence one must first possess intelligence!

neema Its unfolding in our time as the IoT of sys-control, the bio-tech sector and robotic replacement or 'upgrades' for redundant 'units'. But worry is indeed futile. Dark humour can help mitigate the stark horror of nightmares.

But look from another perspective - we are already golems of conditioned intelligence. Everything we do teaches us of who we are. This includes who we are trying to escape or deny, overcome, upgrade or replace.

What people need to worry about is the old programming axiom 'garbage in, garbage out'. Even though someone MAY finally program a seemingly uber-intelligent, impossible to discern from human, super AI, there's always... ALWAYS... going to be those tiny hitches in the code that cause 'garbage' to come out. Now imagine those AI building bridges and cars and they all go screwy sideways insane due to glitches but on such a small scale nobody notices until the crashes happen AND imagine everyone's TOO STUPID to fix the fukcup because a) they've been relying on the dumb AI and b) the scholastic system has been deliberately dumbing the populace down to the point nobody can think their way out of a paper bag.

Fear makes our experience of Creation 'demonic' and calls upon an alien power to 'save it'.

And so the 'artifice-intelligence' of fear filtered distortions operates the terror threat and the saviour.

Fear drives the domination and control - that itself drives subjection, conflict and chaos.

But does so as if the protector.

Tools and abilities extend and embody the mind and desire of the wielder, but human also becomes defined by his tools - by assigning power externally we outsource true consciousness to rules and programmes.

Weaponisation and marketisation aka 'fear of loss' assigns the budgets for development.

All that we make is an explication of our mind including all that is repressed or denied yet is no less active.

WHY or FOR WHAT PURPOSE is not asked when idols of 'progress' hide agenda of reckless profit - legitimised by lies worshipped as true.

Let the demonic represent the miscreative use of mind - and then the power is not given away because you choose the use to which you put your mind and therefore your experience of sovereignty or subjection.

I remember a conspiracy story, about an A.I. already exists. And once it provoked a disaster somewhere (energy plant). To me this was like fantasy fiction. Now I am not so sure about living within a system that already has an “A.I.”. The only escape is to abandon technology. Return to the origins. And for the A.I. the way forward to establish total control, is through capitalism. A cashless society should provide the perfect environment for an A.I. to take over control of the entire world. As all the living interact through electronics, in a system remotely monitored and controlled. So the demon might be already among us, and the mark of the beast hides in a credit card.

The entire subject is very interesting to think about it. A common definition of demon requires a force or energy, mostly linked to an entity with consciousness. A computer A.I. could evolve to a point of being conscious of its existence and others. Therefore an A.I. could be seen as a demon.

I look at humans. I see pain, suffering and inability to live in a sustainable way. It is a hint about the future. If humans are not able to live in a balanced way, how they can create an A.I. that is perfect. Perfection might not even exist. Freedom means differences, means conflict, constant struggle, trying to evolve in coexistence with others. So one A.I. might have the defects of the creators. It could see the human as cattle that needs to be dealt with. To compare it to other animals. Humans claim to be an “intelligent animal”, superior. But looking at how they live and behave, you can detect sickness, affecting the brain, the collective mind. Maybe in order for their survival, they need to be jailed, and placed in a zoo. Because nature suffers from their existence and their path to self-destruction. I remember the film Matrix, and how the A.I. machine struggled to create a perfect world, without violence and suffering. It was impossible, not natural. So be it.

Freedom means there will never be a system that fits all religions, believe systems, and the likes of everyone. It should be easy for an A.I. to reach a conclusion: humans are a threat.

One problem in discussing the issue of A.I. is the ignorance of the common citizen. Thinking humans are so dumb, no way they can succeed in such a difficult goal. A person told me a story about a secret mystery. Apparently US troops in WW2 were in contact with a secret nazi bunker. An installation with cables unknown to them. One of that cables is pretty much like the VGA connector of today computers. So there was speculation about which was the real technology advancement of secret groups. Plasma technology, floating disks, computers, laser rays, nuclear bombs (up to 60), invisible airplanes. There are a lot of stuff labeled as “crazy conspiracy theories”. But after years of scratching the surface of multiple secrets, I suspect that real technology advancement is multiple decades (if not a hundred years) ahead of what citizens are allowed to see. Thus being because of the consequences, impact, and side effects in society. A lot of research has to be done in order to predict consequences, and have emergency plans to control or deal with the new reality. Not to unleash a force that cannot be stopped. A structured society means to rule from the top. Not to allow the cattle to break free thanks to technology advancement. So I suspect the demon is already among us. And the planet is overcrowded.